Seaton's screen play is a weak adaption of Odet's play. Making the play within a play a musical was patently done so Crosby could sing a little. Alas, the songs given to him are third rate and detract rather than add to the quality of the film. Crosby was a good enough actor to have played the role not as a song and dance man and might well have been more effective. He was very good in the role and no doubt drew to some degree from the alcohol addiction of his first wife, Dixie. Sadly, he'd seen it up close and personal. William Holden is the strong center of the film, making Bernie Dodd a tough, dedicated director, willing to stick his neck out for the possibility of a great come back performance. Grace Kelly is woefully miscast as Georgie, a role played by a much older Uta Hagen on Broadway. One has the impression that Kelly's performance is much too "Hey, look at me, I'm acting". Her performance rises to the level of that word that every actor hates, it is adequate. Her win as Best Actress that year was a particularly egregious piece of nonsense. Judy Garland's performance in A Star is Born was head and shoulders above Kelly or any other actress in contention that year. Truth to tell, Kelly was never more than a modestly talented actress who benefited from great press, serial love affairs with leading men, and a romance with a prince. Her best work was probably To Catch a Thief and that script didn't make much in the way of demands on his limited ability. Certainly The Country Girl is a film worth seeing but it could have been so much more! One lovely little irony is in the script and casting. At one point in the film, the Holden character, Bernie Dodd, is trying to explain to the producer, Phillip Cook, played by the actor Anthony Ross, why he wants to use the Crosby character. The example he uses is the casting of an over the hill, ex drunk actress named Laurette Taylor as Amamda Wingfield (the Mother) in the Glass Menagerie on Broadway. Taylor, did in fact give a legendary performance in part. The lovely little irony is that Anthony Ross had played the Gentlemen Caller with Laurette Taylor in the original Broadway production. A small and unimportant point, but fun none-the-less.
Review of The Country Girl
